Summary: Vegeta's little sister, thought dead by the Saiyan Prince, appears on Earth shortly after the Buu Saga. Since the Saiyans are named after vegetables, Roma's name is from romaine lettuce.
Disclaimer: I do not own DBZ. I am a poor educator—hear that students, I'm still writing fanfiction!
Chapter Three
"Super saiyans, all of them? What madness," Roma whispered to herself as she lay in bed incapable of sleeping. The mattress was too comfortable; the sheets and pillows, too clean; the room, too big.
During the long journey to Earth, she had imagined probably scenarios of her reunion with her brother. As such, his negative reaction hadn't caught her entirely off guard, but the intensity struck her to the core. She checked the bandage on her neck and considered how easily Vegeta could have killed her in his blind rage.
Her eyes closed, the event replayed—
Vegeta sent her tumbling headfirst into a circular room, and slammed the door closed. Dominance radiated from him, waves of intense, dark ki flaring out. A nostalgic submissiveness rushed through Roma; for a brief second she was five years old again and at the whim of her older brother. Instinctively she reached out to his mind, but rebounded against a thick mental wall, a layer for each year under Freeza's tyranny.
"You're, you're dead," he said hoarsely, closing in on her, fist balled and eyes blazing with violent frustration. His lungs heaved, hyperventilating as if a balloon in his ribcage was expanding, the memories trapped within threatening to explosively escape and efface the surface of the planet. And Roma was the point of the pin.
Roma scrambled to her feet. "Ve-"
He slammed a fist into her chest, lifted her by a leg, tossed her into the air, and kneed her in the stomach. She landed hard on her knees, cracking the ceramic floor, and coughed up blood. The ethereal glow of a ki blast entered her peripheral vision; she pushed off into flight, flipping feet first into the air, and felt its heat rush a centimeter from her cheek.
Hovering upside-down, Roma's adrenaline-fueled neurons whirled and, in mere picoseconds, childhood memories, dark suppositions, oracular visions coalesced into a guess of Vegeta's intentions—to beat her, representing the impossible, into oblivion.
Her eyes widened at the revelation; he didn't remember her. Her name and relation, obviously, but everything else, everything painful and pleasant from their childhood, existed behind his oldest mental wall. Roma recalled his psychic scream, and Vegeta's eyes winced; The wall not impervious.
Vegeta growled, grabbed her by the arm and threw her across the room; he caught her by the neck before gravity could pull her towards the floor.
"You Are Dead!" The volume and tenor of his voice shook the room. His right hand squeezed, closing off her windpipe and gouging the flesh of her neck with his fingernails.
"V-g-t, st-p." In their childhood training he had bruised her, sparred with her until her muscles were to sore to pick up an eating utensil, even drew blood from her lip or palms, but never never had he inflicted open wounds.
"Dead," he said in a definitive monotone as if he had all intentions of ensuring it was true, even if it meant watching her suffocate. The heaving of his chest had quickened. The balloon (the wall? thought Roma) had reached its limit.
"Dead," he repeated quietly. Roma understood the description now extended beyond her, to all the moments before his slavery to Freeze—kept buried for decades.
"St-p," she begged, as a tingling sensation spread down her face to her shoulders."St-p." "Br-th-r"
Abruptly, Vegeta's expression and muscles deflated, and he released her. She collapsed, coughing for a lungful of air in order to speak. She looked up and saw the haze of emotion lifting, slowly replaced by a one of controlled distress and contemplative disbelief.
"Father, King," Roma weezed. "Sent me away, before Freeza destroyed the planet." Futility, she reached out to his mind; another layer had been erected.
Vegeta backed away. "You're dead?" he whispered.
"I thought you were." Roma said, thinking to herself that the brother she remembered had passed away in the hallway of the palace decades earlier, and afraid this Vegeta would never accept her.
—Roma threw off the blanket and chucked a pillow across the room. She pulled her armor over her lithe body suit and reattached her scouter. Trunks had earlier explained the warriors of this planet had a technique to sense ki without an intermediary device. She pressed a button on her scouter, and scowled at having a disadvantage. The Prince's power level did not appear in the vicinity. She grunted in relief and ventured out of her room into the compound of the strange Capsule Corp Empire.
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After emptying a shelf in the kitchen of its savory contents, Roma continued poking her head into any unlocked or open doors—an odorous laundry room, a room full of bland sitting furniture, a cluttered room of books, Trunk's pig-sty with him sleeping half out of his twisted comforter. An error message popped up on her scouter; his power level was out of its range. She smirked with sudden, unconditional pride towards another being; a pleasantly alien feeling that.
She considered waking the young one. She brushed strands of lavender hair away from his cherub face. Even in rest, his features were strikingly that of her brother. There was no doubting this halfling was family.
An insignificant blip appeared on her scouter. She followed it down the hall and through an unassuming door way. Roma froze, stunned by an expansive atrium, filled with a colorful variety of plants and animals, many of the latter were currently deep in sleep. How idiotic, she thought, bringing the outdoors indoors.
"Oh, you must be Roma!" a human woman squealed excitedly.
Roma mentally jumped, but showed no outward appearance of being startled. "It is late, woman. Do you not retire with the others?"
"I'm a night-owl, and I've only ever needed four or five hours of sleep." She fluffed her yellow hair. (What gaudy hair colors humans have, Roma thought.) "Won't you come help me? I'm planting some black-eyed daisies!" The blond human raised a drooping, dumb flower up as an example.
Roma needed something to keep her mind occupied, to not think of Veg- "Fine."
"Really?" The blonde's eyes widened and for a moment she stared as if in a daze. Roma wondered if the hair color had gone to her head. After a few seconds, the human smiled and giggled at a pitch painful to Roma's ears. "I must say, you're much better than another handsome man."
"..." Roma kneeled down beside the human and picked up an unplanted flower. "Woman, you are disturbingly strange."
"Thank you. Please, call me Bunny. And you need to make a hole first, honey."
Bunny, without any fear, reached out and grabbed Roma's hand, placing the handle of a spade into her palm. Then, she gently guided Roma through the steps of digging a hole of proper width and depth, placing the flower in with the roots spread apart, and filling around the flower with loose dirt. Bunny patted down the soil with Roma a few times, because Roma's saiyan strength had caused her to compress the dirt around the first flower practically to brick.
The texture of the rich, damp, black soil contrasted with the dense, dry, and red dust of Roma's home planet. The environment on Vegeta had been harsh and unforgiving, but the planet Earth spoiled its inhabitants to excess, enabling them to grow plants and raise animals for mere appreciation.
By 7 AM, dozens of black-eyed daisies filled the garden. "This is the last one. Would you care to?" Bunny asked.
Roma silently accepted the flower. As she patted around the daisy, she let her fingers linger in the damp earth, absorbing the ethereal sensation of a cool, calm existence. She understood in that moment that she wouldn't be returning to her life in space—she couldn't fathom being apart from her brother ever again.
She would have to make Earth her home.
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"Not too quickly with this batch dear," Bunny instructed, looking up at a bit of batter drying on the ceiling.
Roma growled and stirred extra slowly, using less strength than had been needed to plant the flowers. The blond had promised her a delicious breakfast of something called pancakes, described as fluffy, sweet, and buttery. Roma realized only too late she was expected to assist; it seemed this woman (Bunny sounded like a weak name) was abusing her as a servant.
For a second, the saiyan blood boiled in her veins and Roma considered killing the human woman for insulting a saiyan princess with work. Roma gritted her teeth and grudgingly continued to stir. ("Not worth the energy," she muttered.) Her mouth salivated at the thought of these pancakes, especially if they were anything as good as the strange foods she'd taken from the kitchen earlier—boxes labeled pop tarts, graham crackers, and several cans of chicken'n'dumplings.
And she was hungry.
"Oh you're so helpful! My arm would be tired by now," Bunny said as she began to butter the griddle. "It takes so much batter to make enough pancakes for my grandson, let alone his pretty aunt as well."
"Pretty?" Roma
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Bulma woke up at 7:40 AM and rolled over to the opposite side of the bed. She expected to breath in her husband's musky scent and soak up the remnants of his fading warmth. But the bed was cold and the pillow smelled of detergent.
She recalled the drama of the previous day and sighed heavily. Her brilliant mind spun with possibilities and probabilities. Suddenly she feared something was wrong, only because nothing had gone wrong during the night. Perhaps Vegeta had killed Roma, or Roma was planning on taking over the world and had stolen some piece of technology – maybe she kidnapped Trunks!
Bulma, not yet coordinated, got up all twisted in her sheets and promptly fell to the floor.
She pulled herself together and hurried down the stairs. At the entrance to the breakfast nook, she stopped dead in her tracks for the second time in less than 24 hours.
There in the kitchen stood a female saiyan in full uniform, wearing a pink frilly apron that read 'Bad Gurl' and placing a monstrous stack of pancakes onto the table in front of a drooling Trunks.
"Oh my god!" She exclaimed and collapsed onto the floor in a fit of laughter. Suddenly, everything seemed worth it – meeting Goku, saving the Earth multiple times, nearly getting killed hundreds of time, having a grumpy alien husband – just to see such a ridiculous image. Bulma wiped tears from her eyes.
"Mumph, youf okway?" Trunks asked with his mouth stuffed with half a stack of pancakes.
Her mind quickly associated Roma in the pink apron with Vegeta in the pink 'Bad Man' shirt and peeled into another bout of chest-splitting hilarity. Bulma sucked in a hard breath as tears rolled down her cheeks. Then she realized someone else was laughing with her. Bulma stopped and sat up. Roma stood, still in the apron, deviously giggling under her breath. The tone miffed Bulma; it sounded as though a King was being amused by the antics of a peasant.
"My ladies," said Bunny, "I'm glad everyone is so happy this morning, but sorry deary," she looked at Bulma, "your father just called and he needs you in Lab #6 right away!"
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Roma walked around the compound with her nephew for the fourth time that mid-morning. Bulma had been called away to oversee the experimental activities of the Capsule Corp empire. She'd promised to send someone, a friend, to give the tour she'd offered. Roma had been tempted to use the gravity room as she desperately wanted some intense exercise to work off the anxiety that had been building up since she'd arrived. Unfortunately, or fortunately, Trunks had warned her never to use the gravity room without Vegeta's expressed permission and especially not when he was in a bad mood. Trunk's tone of voice hinted at a prior, horrible experience when he'd done otherwise.
Trunks told her many other things, some of the highlights were:
The planet has one moon, which was destroyed, but somehow came back. (Odd, thought Roma.)
Vegeta is afraid of worms or anything squirmy and slimy. (Roma frowned remembering the incident that had caused this fear.)
There are other saiyans, the Son family, that live in bumble-nowhere. (Ha! Peasants! Roma gleemed.)
There are some strong humans called Z-fighters. They're okay. (A strong flea is not something interesting, mused Roma.)
We have these dragon balls that grant wishes.
"Wait," Roma stopped Trunk before he began to describe ice cream, "A device that grants wishes?"
Trunks nodded. "Yeah, there's 7 of them. You have to find them, put them together, and say what ya want. Then they go away for a year and ya have to find them again."
"So," Roma rubbed her chin and smiled mischievously from ear to ear, "You can use them once every year."
"Uh," Trunks watched the wheels in his Aunt's head turn and recalled the stories he'd heard of "When Vegeta was Evil." It dawned on him that he shouldn't have shared this tidbit about Earth. "Well, only some wishes work. Like you can only bring the dead back if they were murdered, and it has to be within a year of them dying, and you," he thought for a moment and then struck on something clever to say so Roma would forget about the dragon balls, "you CAN NOT wish for immortality."
"I sense you are lying child," Roma said. Trunks blushed. They'd reached the edge of the atrium; it seemed all the hallways led to it. She crossed her arms and gazed up at the dome skylight. "Immortality is such a stupid wish," she sneered. "What's the point of living if you live forever. Where is the honor in never being able to die fighting."
"To die fighting," repeated Trucks thoughtfully, "But—"
Roma put her arm out for silence. An energy level, higher than any human she'd yet seen, spiked on her scouter. She spotted a man in yellow pants and jacket flying in from a window. She flew up, grabbed him by the collar of his white shirt and yanked the startled man down to the floor with her.
"Identify yourself intruder."
"Huh," Yamacha said, staring wide-eyed at the saiyan half-choking him. "Who's the intruder here? Trunks!"
"Hi, Yamcha, I guess you met my aunt," he said.
"Aunt! She's a saiyan! Does Veget—"
Roma shook him, "Don't say that name."
Trunks rolled his eyes. "Aunt Roma. You can let him go. He's harmless."
Yamcha frowned. "Harmless? Let me tell you kid, in my day—" He raised his energy and pulled against Roma's hold of him.
Roma watched through her scouter as the human's power level jumped up. As he began to escape from her grasp, she released him. He lost his balance and fell face forward into the hard tile floor. The cracking smack was immensely satisfying to Roma. Yamcha sat up and rubbed his face, mumbling under his breath about "ape aliens" and "Bulma's trickery."
"He does talk a lot." Trunks gave him his classic Vegeta glare. Yamcha shut his mouth.
"You are acquainted with the human Bulma?" Roma asked.
"Yes," Yamcha sighed.
"She cannot show me the city as promised, you have been ordered to do it in her sted."
"Order, now listen here—" Roma snatched him by the ear and pinched. "Ow, ow, Trunks."
"Sorry, I really have to study. Mom's quizzing me," Trunks said and headed towards his room. "Have fun. Be nice Aunt Roma."
Yamcha, still on the floor, sighed in defeat. Damn that blue-haired vixen, he thought, when she said give someone a tour I thought she meant a hot friend of hers or an attractive cousin.
Yamcha's eyes perused Roma. He had always secretly wondered about female saiyans. He'd theorized perhaps they were burly, large, and aggressive, ready to knock their mate unconscious and drag him into a cave. He was relieved to see they were as lithe and curvy as human women. At least he could enjoy the view during what was going to be a very long day.
Roma placed her hands on her hips, straightened her shoulders, and looked down at him. "I regret that I thought you were an intruder. Please, show me the city." She offered her right hand.
"What?" Yamcha said. He pretended to clean out an ear. A saiyan being polite was a shock, relatively speaking, as it was still voiced as a command. He accepted her hand, and she roughly yanked him back on his feet. Standing awkwardly close, he became distracted by her deep eyes. The obsidian shade was alluring evil in the way a poisonous spider is fascinating. Roma growled and Yamcha jumped a step back.
He looked at her alien uniform; it'd been a few years since he'd seen one. "You can't go out like that."
"Why not?" She huffed. "What do you humans find wrong with my apparel?"
"You'll stand out too much." Plus, he thought,everyone will recognize that style of armor from the televised arrival of Vegeta and Nappa.
"If I change into human garments, you will show me this city?" she asked.
"Do I have a choice?" Yamcha asked aggressively, brushing out the wrinkles Roma had caused to his favorite shirt and sports jacket and trying to avoid eye contact as much as possible.
Roma cocked a grin, "No, you do not."